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Pacific Northwest Kaido Racers Hardcover Book
Photography art book featuring some of the best Kaido Racers in the Pacific Northwest.
Kaido racers have a deep and rich history starting in 1970s Japan where teenagers would modify their cars to resemble the race cars of that time. It quickly grew into the 1980s and 1990s as their skills increased and they started to build more wild creations. As car enthusiasts in other areas of Japan started taking influence they would create their own style of kaido racers further enriching the culture. Kaido racers had mostly been confined to Japan but with the rise of the internet and social media they now have global appeal and people from all over have started building their own.
In January of 2022 Keith Measures and Reid Olliffe hosted the first Pacific Northwest New Years Touring in Vancouver BC. It is a tradition in Japan to usher in the new year where kaido racer enthusiasts would meet up with their cars (some of which they would build specifically for the event) and go cruising the highways. Keith and Reid were inspired by this event and decided to put together an event car and host a handful of friends to join them on a New Years Touring. The night was a smash hit and was the start of the Pacific Northwest kaido racer community as we know it today. As of November 2025 there have been eight Tourings including the Summer Touring events and the creativity and craftsmanship has grown to immense heights. People now travel from all over the world to visit and join in the fun. This book is to celebrate the amazing community that has been built and to show off the amazing creations that brought us here.
I started taking photos for this book in the summer of 2023 not knowing how much of an undertaking it would be. I set very strict guidelines for this project, the photos had to be shot on medium format colour positive film, they needed to be in the evening under artificial lighting, and they must feature kaido racers as the main subject matter. Colour positive film or slide film can be very difficult to work with since there isn’t as much exposure latitude as standard colour negative film or digital images have, every photo would need to be a long exposure with a tripod. So each time I took a photo I needed the exposure setting to be just perfect and I would have to wait until the film got developed to make sure the images turned out. Another challenge was finding locations with adequate lighting while also providing an interesting background. This led to many evenings spent location scouting trying to find spots that had the right combo of good lighting, background subject matter and accessibility for these low cars, since most of them are only a couple inches off the ground or less. During my process of shooting for this book, Fujifilm stopped development of the film stock I was using. Luckily I still had quite a few rolls left over but this meant that eventually I would run out of film and couldn’t include some cars in this project. There are many other fantastic kaido racers that didn’t make it into this book but all deserve to be represented because of their owners’ creativity and hard work. But out of all these limitations I believe I have created some of my best work that highlights the amazing creativity and hard work of the Pacific Northwest kaido racer community.
Photography art book featuring some of the best Kaido Racers in the Pacific Northwest.
Kaido racers have a deep and rich history starting in 1970s Japan where teenagers would modify their cars to resemble the race cars of that time. It quickly grew into the 1980s and 1990s as their skills increased and they started to build more wild creations. As car enthusiasts in other areas of Japan started taking influence they would create their own style of kaido racers further enriching the culture. Kaido racers had mostly been confined to Japan but with the rise of the internet and social media they now have global appeal and people from all over have started building their own.
In January of 2022 Keith Measures and Reid Olliffe hosted the first Pacific Northwest New Years Touring in Vancouver BC. It is a tradition in Japan to usher in the new year where kaido racer enthusiasts would meet up with their cars (some of which they would build specifically for the event) and go cruising the highways. Keith and Reid were inspired by this event and decided to put together an event car and host a handful of friends to join them on a New Years Touring. The night was a smash hit and was the start of the Pacific Northwest kaido racer community as we know it today. As of November 2025 there have been eight Tourings including the Summer Touring events and the creativity and craftsmanship has grown to immense heights. People now travel from all over the world to visit and join in the fun. This book is to celebrate the amazing community that has been built and to show off the amazing creations that brought us here.
I started taking photos for this book in the summer of 2023 not knowing how much of an undertaking it would be. I set very strict guidelines for this project, the photos had to be shot on medium format colour positive film, they needed to be in the evening under artificial lighting, and they must feature kaido racers as the main subject matter. Colour positive film or slide film can be very difficult to work with since there isn’t as much exposure latitude as standard colour negative film or digital images have, every photo would need to be a long exposure with a tripod. So each time I took a photo I needed the exposure setting to be just perfect and I would have to wait until the film got developed to make sure the images turned out. Another challenge was finding locations with adequate lighting while also providing an interesting background. This led to many evenings spent location scouting trying to find spots that had the right combo of good lighting, background subject matter and accessibility for these low cars, since most of them are only a couple inches off the ground or less. During my process of shooting for this book, Fujifilm stopped development of the film stock I was using. Luckily I still had quite a few rolls left over but this meant that eventually I would run out of film and couldn’t include some cars in this project. There are many other fantastic kaido racers that didn’t make it into this book but all deserve to be represented because of their owners’ creativity and hard work. But out of all these limitations I believe I have created some of my best work that highlights the amazing creativity and hard work of the Pacific Northwest kaido racer community.